Fracking And The Environment: Landmark Fracking Lawsuit starts with Twist in Alberta
by Andrew Nikiforuk
Global Research
April 27, 2012
A landmark lawsuit against an energy giant and two Alberta government regulatory agencies concerning water well contamination by hydraulic fracturing started with an unusual twist in Alberta’s Court of Queen’s Bench yesterday.
Judge B. L. Veldhuis began the proceedings in a Drumheller courtroom attended by 20 landowners from across the province by admitting that she was going to do something unexpected: she then asked for a shorter statement of claim.
Jessica Ernst, a 54-year-old oil patch consultant and scientist from Rosebud, Alberta, is suing EnCana, one of the continent’s largest unconventional gas producers, for negligence causing water contamination and the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB), the province’s energy regulator, for breaching the Charter of Rights.
The lawsuit alleges that the regulator “banished” Ernst, now a celebrated landowner in the province, from contact with the board after she publically spoke out about water well contamination and noise pollution.
In addition, the $33-million lawsuit alleges that Alberta Environment, one of two agencies responsible for groundwater protection, failed to uphold its regulatory responsibilities.
The lawsuit effectively puts on trial the practice and regulation of hydraulic fracturing: the controversial blasting of coal, oil and shale formations with toxic chemicals, sand and water.
North America’s fracking boom has increased natural gas supplies, lowered gas prices and weakened the bottom line of many gas companies. The poorly studied technology, which can also cause earthquakes, has sparked moratoriums, debates and regulatory investigations from New Brunswick to Wyoming due to concerns about groundwater contamination, air pollution and methane leaks.
Neither EnCana nor the Alberta regulators have fielded statements of defence on shallow fracking incidents that took place eight years ago during a frenzied coal-bed methane drilling boom in central Alberta.
Instead, lawyers for both EnCana and the ERCB came prepared to argue a variety of motions to dismiss the entire case or strike out entire paragraphs from Ernst’s highly readable 73-page statement of claim as “inflammatory” and “embarrassing.”
In particular, the ERCB, whose mission is to develop oil and gas “in a manner that is fair, responsible and in the public interest,” was prepared to argue that it has “no duty of care” to a landowner with contaminated water.
Toronto lawyer Murray Klippenstein, who represents Ernst, agreed with the judge’s request and says he will submit a shorter claim within a month. (Klippenstein, a no-nonsense litigator on critical justice issues, successfully represented the family of slain First Nation activist Dudley George against the Ontario government of Mike Harris.)
“We know that EnCana and the Board and the government did not like the detailed description of Jessica’s case and were trying very hard to have parts removed,” explained Klippenstein outside the courtroom.
“The judge wanted a more concise description and that can be easily provided.”
The lawsuit alleges that an experimental and shallow drilling and fracking program into coal seams contaminated Ernst’s water source with so much methane that she could light her tap water on fire.
“EnCana refused to address Ms. Ernst’s concerns or answer her questions; failed to investigate Ms. Ernst’s water contamination problem; refused to disclose the chemicals used in fracturing, drilling and servicing operations,” adds the claim.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has linked fracking activity by EnCana to the contamination of groundwater in Pavillion, Wyoming. EnCana, which is losing money and shareholder confidence due to its extreme dependence on industrial scale shale gas plays, calls the EPA investigation flawed.
Landowners at the courthouse said they came to support Jessica Ernst as a champion of the public interest and groundwater protection.
“Jessica is doing what we all want to do but don’t have the balls to stand up and do,” said Shawn Campbell, a Ponoka area rancher who also has water contamination problems related to fracking. “Water is the key issue. If you don’t have clean water what are you going to do? You won’t live long.”
Dairy farmer Jan Slomp, a board member of the National Farmer’s Union, which has called for a moratorium on fracturing, also attended the first day of the trial because of his admiration for Ernst’s courage.
“I’m here to support Jessica. This issue needs to be brought into the public arena. People are concerned and know something is wrong.” [. . . . ]
Andrew Nikiforuk wrote the first stories on hydraulic fracturing and the Ernst Case for ROB Magazine and Canadian Business magazine.
Killer Tornado Near Tokyo
TheIntelHub.com
May 5, 2012
24,000 homes are currently without electricity just northeast of Japans capital city as a powerful tornado (radiated?) has ripped through Tokyo.
Reports of people injured and killed are surfacing as locals are in shock that such a rare event has taken place.
An excerpt from Fox News reads;
Firefighters and medical teams rushed to the area after the tornado struck Tsukuba city, 60 kilometers (40 miles) from Tokyo. The city is a science center, with dozens of research and academic institutes, but the tornado appeared to mostly hit residential areas.
A 14-year-old boy died after being injured by the storm, Tsukuba Medical Center said.
More than 30 other people were injured, including at least 10 who were being treated at hospitals, fire officials said. Details of the death and injuries were not immediately available.
Fukushima is Falling Apart: Are You Ready?
By Christina Consolo
Contributing writer for End the Lie and host of Nuked Radio
April 21, 2012
Investigators visiting the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in May 2011 (Image credit: Greg Webb/IAEA)
Thirteen months have passed since the Fukushima reactors exploded, and a U.S. Senator finally got off his ass and went to Japan to see what is going on over there.
What he saw was horrific.
And now he is saying that we are in big trouble.
See the letter he sent to U.S. Ambassador to Japan Ichiro Fujisaki, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and NRC’s Chairman Gregory Jaczko here.
But what is so ironic about this is that we have been in this heap of trouble since March of 2011. March 17th, to be exact, when the plume of radioactive materials began bombarding the west coast of California.
And Oregon. And Washington. And British Columbia. And later Maine, Europe, and everywhere in between.
Independent researchers, nuke experts, and scientists, from oceanography to entomology and everywhere in between, having been trying to sound the alarm ever since.
The scientists most upset are those who have studied the effects of radiation on health. I’ll say it again, so its really clear: we are in big trouble.
The most preliminary reports of soil contamination are starting to come in from the USGS, who has seemed reluctant to share this information. Los Angeles, California, Portland, Oregon, and Boulder, Colorado, so far have the highest radioactive particle contamination out of the entire US.
That being said, every single city tested across the country showed contamination from Fukushima. What is even more alarming, however, about the numbers coming in, is that they are from samples taken April 5th, of last year.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, has only recently confirmed that there were three meltdowns, and they have been ongoing, unabated, for thirteen months, and no effort has been made to contain them.
Technology has to be developed/invented to deal with the melted out corium under the reactors. Until then, they will keep doing what they have been doing.
TEPCO just keeps dumping water on them, after which they let it pour into the ocean, and steam up through the ground, every second of every day. The jet stream, and a highly dynamic portion of our atmosphere called the troposphere, have been swirling around massive amounts of radioactive particles and settling them out, mostly in rain, over the entire northern hemisphere, especially the west coast of North America, from Alaska down to Baja and even further.
Iodine, cesium, strontium, plutonium, uranium, and a host of other fission products have been coming directly from Japan to the west coast for thirteen months.
Maybe you have heard about sick seals, polar bears, tainted fish, mutations in dandelions and fruits and vegetables, possibly even animals already, and seaweed. In fact the kelp from Corona del Mar contained 40,000,000 bcq/kg of radioactive iodine, as reported in Scientific American several weeks ago.
If you don’t know your becquerels, its a lot. That’s what your pacific fish feed on. And that was only ONE isotope reported. There were up to 1600 different isotopes that have been floating around in our air, pouring out of the reactors, and steaming out of the ground, every second of every day, for 13 months.
And there has been silence from our mainstream media, for which the depths of depravity are so severe I will devote an entire article just to the “why” at a future time.
But back to the research: reports in the past week indicate the pollen in southern California is radioactive now too, and it is flying around, and if you live there and go outside, you are breathing it in. And so are your children.
Along with fission products blowing over from Japan. And radiation in your drinking water. And in your rain. And in the fish you are eating. And your vegetables. And the milk supply. And its happening every second, of every day. For 13 months. Are you starting to see a problem here?
Problem is, that’s not even the biggest problem. The biggest problem is what Senator Wyden is all bent out of shape about, even though independent researchers and nuke experts have been warning about this for a year.
And that is that the Reactor #4 building is on the verge of collapsing. Seismicity standards rate the building at a zero, meaning even a small earthquake could send it into a heap of rubble. And sitting at the top of the building, in a pool that is cracked, leaking, and precarious even without an earthquake, are 1565 fuel rods (give or take a few), some of them “fresh fuel” that was ready to go into the reactor on the morning of March 11th when the earthquake and tsunami hit.
If they are MOX fuel, containing 6% plutonium, one fuel rod has the potential to kill 2.89 billion people. If this pool collapses, as Senator Wyden is now saying too, we would face a mass extinction event from the release of radiation in those rods.
That is, if we aren’t in one already. Nuke experts like Arnie Gundersen and Helen Caldicott are prepared to evacuate their families to the southern hemisphere if that happens. It is that serious.
So now you know, if you didn’t before. We are in big trouble.
Get informed. Start paying attention to this. Every single statement in this article is verifiable, and I will continue to verify and validate the seriousness of this situation at every opportunity I have.
This may be the most important thing you ever pay attention to, for the sake of your family, friends, your neighbors, every one you know and meet, all of humanity.
It’s been thirteen months, you have some catching up to do.
Please help Christina purchase a spectrometer in order to get the most accurate radiation readings and thus get you the most precise information possible by shopping through her Amazon link or donate directly via PayPal to fukushimafacts@gmail.com. Keep in mind, this is expensive equipment and it is the only way that specific isotope readings can be obtained from food items.
Minor editing by Madison Ruppert
Christina Consolo is a former clinical researcher supervisor with NIH credentialing; a former Member-at-Large for the Board of Directors, Ophthalmic Photographers’ Society; A peer reviewer for the Journal of Ophthalmic Photography; She has written, published, and contributed to numerous scientific research in retinal imaging and ophthalmogy for the past 24 years; She is also an award-winning biomedical photographer and maintains several websites to teach people about radiation, mitigation, and other nuclear issues. She is also the host of “Nuked Radio” Tuesdays & Thursdays from 12-1:00 pm EST on the Orion Talk Radio Network.
For more info including mitigation for radiation exposure, please visit FukushimaFacts.com, where you can sign up to receive Fallout Forecasts on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
Top Search Terms Used to Find This Page:
- best place to be when fukushima blows apart
- is fukishima the end
- how bad is fukushima 2012
- georgia fukushima radiation
- fukushima reactor 4 news
Related posts:
- Fukushima plant not ready for approaching typhoon
- Partial Meltdown Finally Admitted at Fukushima – No End in Sight
- As Libyan rebels are falling apart at the seams, Gaddafi regime remains unfazed by NATO campaign
- Fukushima, U.S.A.: could we be next?
- Libyan society falling apart without anti-Gaddafi glue
[hat tip: TheIntelHub.com]
5/5/2012 — SIGN THE WHITEHOUSE PETITION — Shut down nuclear reactors like Japan
ＤＵＴＣＨＳＩＮＳＥ = ＳＩＮＣＥＤＵＴＣＨ
May 5, 2012
watch the video here:
———————————
full text below the video:
Here is the short link to sign the petition: needs 25,000+ signatures ASAP!
—————————–
from the whitehouse.gov petition instructions: we have 30 days to get 25,000+ LEGITIMATE signatures from US Citizens:
quote:
“You now have 30 days to get 25,000 signatures in order for your petition to be reviewed by the White House. Until your petition has 150 signatures, it will only be available from the following URL and will not be publicly viewable on the Open Petitions section of We the People:”
here is the long version of the link:
————————————
text of the petition:
we petition the obama administration to: shut down ALL nuclear reactors 1 at a time, safety as the reason. Must be made to withstand Earthquakes / Tsunamis.
Recently, (May 5 2012) Japan has announced the SHUT DOWN of its final nuclear power plant.
The entire country is now operating free from nuclear power.
Here is the MSM news story confirmation released May 5, 2012:
http://news.yahoo.com/thousands-march-japan-shuts-off-nuclear-power-071425811–finance.html
This petition of redress to the Whitehouse, specifically to President Obama, is aimed to mimic the reduction, and eventual ELIMINATION of all nuclear power plants within the Continental United States of America.
The shutdown process: Close each nuclear plant when it comes up for safety review. The reason for shutdown will be for the plant to assure it is 100% earthquake / tsunami proof.
If the plant is not deemed 100% Earthquake / Tsunami proof, then it will be permanently closed.
Fukushima reactor No. 4 vulnerable to catastrophic collapse; could unleash 85 times Cesium-137 radiation of Chernobyl; human civilization on the brink
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Natural News
May 6, 2012
(NaturalNews) The news you are about to read puts everything else in the category of “insignificant” by comparison. Concerned about the 2012 U.S. presidential election? Worried about GMOs? Fluoride? Vaccines? Secret prisons? None of that even matters if we don’t solve the problem of Fukushima reactor No. 4, which is on the verge of a catastrophic failure that could unleash enough radiation to end human civilization on our planet. (See the numbers below.)
The resulting releasing of radiation would turn North America into a “dead zone” for humans… mutated (and failed) crops, radioactive groundwater, skyrocketing infant mortality, an explosion in cancer and infertility… this is what could be unleashed at any moment from an earthquake in Japan. Such an event could result in the release of 85 times the Cesium-137 released by the Chernobyl catastrophe, say experts (see below). And the Chernobyl catastrophe made its surrounding regions uninhabitable by humans for centuries.
Yet, astonishingly, the usual suspects of deception are saying absolutely nothing about this problem. The mainstream media (the dying dinosaur media, actually) pretends there’s no problem with Fukushima. President Obama says nothing about it. Federal regulators, including the NRC, are all but silent. It’s as if they think their silence on the issue somehow makes it go away.
Perhaps these professional liars in the media and government have become so used to idea that they can simply spin their own reality (and get the public suckers to believe almost anything) that they now believe they can ignore the laws of physics. That’s why they have refused to cover the low-level radiation plume that continues to be emitted from Fukushima.
The fate of the world now rests on reactor No. 4
“It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on No.4 reactor.” – Mitsuhei Murata, Former Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland and Senegal, Executive Director, the Japan Society for Global System and Ethics
Mr. Murata’s stunning statement should be front-page news everywhere around the world. Why? Because he’s right. If reactor No. 4 suffers even a minor earthquake, it could set off a chain reaction of events that quickly lead to North America becoming uninhabitable by humans for centuries to come. Imagine California, Oregon and Washington states being inundated with radiation — up to 85 times the radiation release from Chernobyl. We’re talking about the end of human life on the scale of continents.
Here’s how this could happen, according to Mr. Robert Alvarez, former Senior Policy Adviser to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and the Environment at the U.S. Department of Energy:
“The No. 4 pool is about 100 feet above ground, is structurally damaged and is exposed to the open elements. If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident. The infrastructure to safely remove this material was destroyed as it was at the other three reactors. Spent reactor fuel cannot be simply lifted into the air by a crane as if it were routine cargo. In order to prevent severe radiation exposures, fires and possible explosions, it must be transferred at all times in water and heavily shielded structures into dry casks. As this has never been done before, the removal of the spent fuel from the pools at the damaged Fukushima-Dai-Ichi reactors will require a major and time-consuming re-construction effort and will be charting in unknown waters.” (http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/forum/218/nuclear-expert-fukushima-spent-…)
Note: He says “10 times” the Cesium-137 of Chernobyl. Others say up to 85 times. Nobody is 100% certain of what would actually occur because this has never happened before. We are in uncharted territory as a civilization, facing a unique and imminent threat to our continued survival. And both governments and the corporations that assured us nuclear power was safe are playing their “cover my ass” games while the world waits in the crosshairs of a nuclear apocalypse.
Fukushima Facts
To better understand the severity of this situation, read these facts about Fukushima reactor No. 4 which I have assembled from available news sources:
• Reactor #4 contains 1,535 spent fuel rods which remain highly radioactive.
• These fuel rods currently hold the potential to emit 37 million curies of radiation.
• Those fuel rods are stored in a concrete pool located 100 feet above the ground, inside the structurally compromised reactor building, effectively making the pool open to the air.
• The pool holding these fuel rods is “structurally damaged.”
• “If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident.” – Mr. Robert Alvarez, former Senior Policy Adviser to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and the Environment at the U.S. Department of Energy.
• “The infrastructure to safely remove this material was destroyed as it was at the other three reactors.” – Mr. Alvarez.
• Just 50 meters from reactor No. 4, a much larger pool of spent fuel rods contains 6,375 fuel rods, all of which remain highly radioactive.
• All these fuel rods are, astonishingly, exposed to the open air. They are not held inside any containment vessel.
• The total number of spent fuel rods across all six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi site is 11,421.
• If reactor No. 4 suffers a structural failure, the release of radiation from the 1,535 spent fuel rods would make it virtually impossible for work to continue on the site, potentially resulting in an inability to halt a massive radiation release from all the other rods.
• In all, the 11,421 fuel rods held at the Fukushima Daiichi facility contain roughly 336 million curies of “long-lived radioactivity.” Roughly 134 million curies of that is Cesium-137.
• “Reactors that have been operating for decades, such as those at the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site have generated some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet.” – Mr. Robert Alvarez, U.S. Dept. of Energy
• This amount of Cesium-137 radioactivity held in the full collection of fuel rods at Fukushima is 85 times the amount released at Chernobyl.
• The release of this amount of Cesium-137 would “destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is an issue of human survival.” (http://akiomatsumura.com/2012/04/682.html)
• The mainstream media operates in a total blackout of this news, refusing to even acknowledge the existence of this immediate threat to human civilization.
• The mainstream media is, in large part, owned by General Electric, the very company that designed the Fukushima reactors in the first place. It is clear that GE is diligently running a total media blackout on this news in order to cover its own ass and prevent people from asking questions about the faulty engineering and nuclear facility site selection that led to this catastrophe.
18,000 dead so far and hundreds of millions at risk: The media cover-up
“The executive branch and multiple federal agencies, agencies tasked with keeping the American public safe, did their best to hide and to cover-up information about a deadly radioactive plume and ensuing fallout that was headed for the West Coast of the United States from Japan,” says Alexander Higgins. (http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/03/01/plumegate-media-silent-fe…)
He goes on to state “The evidence obtained in the FOIA request indicates that right from the start, the NRC had a clear idea of the significance of the disaster that was unfolding, but concealed the truth from the American public. The results of the plume and fallout can be measured in the rise of infant mortality rates: cells of unborn and newborn children are dividing at a much higher rate than those of a mature adult, thus the amount of damage is greatly increased and hence more detectable. Conservative estimates place the number of stillborn following the Fukushima accident at over 18,000.”
See the FOIA documents here:
http://www.houseoffoust.com/NRC/ML11269A172.pdf
and here:
http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1205/ML12052A106.pdf
The conspiracy cover-up of the radioactive plumes still being emitted from Fukushima is now being called “Plume-Gate.” This issue needs to be front and center on all our radar screens. There may quite literally be nothing more important for the survival of the human race than dealing with this runaway issue of Fukushima radiation in the immediate term, and the larger issue of the scientific fraud of nuclear power “safety” thereafter.
As Higgins explains, “It is this author’s opinion that any media source not shouting about Plume-Gate as loud as they can are likely controlled by the powers-that-be.” He’s got a point. This should be our No. 1 issue, and NaturalNews is re-shifting priorities right now to help raise the alarm on the impeding Fukushima disaster for the obvious reason that everything else pales in comparison to the importance of dealing with this.
Take action now
Although I hate to call for the UN to do anything at all, as it is a criminal globalist organization engaged in widespread sex slave trafficking, child abuse and mass murder, the UN definitely has some pull with governments around the world. The petition linked below calls for the UN to take immediate, decisive action to deal with Fukushima reactor No. 4 before it’s too late and we all get “Fuk’ed” beyond repair.
http://fukushima.greenaction-japan.org/2012/05/01/an-urgent-request-o…
This petition calls for two actions:
1. The United Nations should organize a Nuclear Security Summit to take up the crucial problem of the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent nuclear fuel pool.
2. The United Nations should establish an independent assessment team on Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 and coordinate international assistance in order to stabilize the unit’s spent nuclear fuel and prevent radiological consequences with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Here at NaturalNews, although we hold the UN in contempt for its globalist actions and crimes against humanity, we nevertheless support this particular petition and the urgent effort for the UN to actually do something positive for a change. In fact, if the UN ignores this issue, that itself would be the greatest crime of all against humanity, for failure to solve this reactor No. 4 situation could mean the end of human civilization as we know it.
NaturalNews will continue to cover this issue, especially focusing on reactor No. 4. We are reaching out to Higgins and Gunderson to conduct more interviews on this subject. Watch for more coverage here at NaturalNews.com.
Sources include:
Japanese letter:
http://akiomatsumura.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Letter-to-Prime-M…
Fukushima Update
http://fukushima.greenaction-japan.org/
Arnie Gunderson – one of the most important scientific voices of truth and reason on this issue
http://www.fairewinds.com/
Alexander Higgins:
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/03/01/plumegate-media-silent-fe…
Articles Related to This Article:
• Fukushima update: TEPCO admits radiation leaks will continue for at least three more months, maybe longer
• Government response to ongoing Fukushima radiation? Deafening silence
• Radioactive fallout from Fukushima approaching same levels as Chernobyl
• Fukushima raised to level 7 Chernobyl event, Japan admits more radiation escaped than we were told
• Nuclear expert says Fukushima radiation coming to USA, massive cover-up under way
• Confirmed: Fukushima disaster contaminated ocean with 50 million times normal radiation, leaks still ongoing
Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War: The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation
by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research
May 28, 2012
Note to Readers: Remember to bookmark this page for future reference.
Please Forward the GR I-Book far and wide. Post it on Facebook.
[scroll down for I-BOOK Table of Contents]
GLOBAL RESEARCH ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER SERIES
Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War
The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation
Michel Chossudovsky (Editor)
I-Book No. 3, January 25 2012
Global Research’s Online Interactive I-Book Reader brings together, in the form of chapters, a collection of Global Research feature articles and videos, including debate and analysis, on a broad theme or subject matter.
In this Interactive Online I-Book we bring to the attention of our readers an important collection of articles, reports and video material on the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe and its impacts (scroll down for the Table of Contents).
To consult our Online Interactive I-Book Reader Series, click here.
INTRODUCTION 
The World is at a critical crossroads. The Fukushima disaster in Japan has brought to the forefront the dangers of Worldwide nuclear radiation.
The crisis in Japan has been described as “a nuclear war without a war”. In the words of renowned novelist Haruki Murakami:
“This time no one dropped a bomb on us … We set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives.”
Nuclear radiation –which threatens life on planet earth– is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities.
While the long-term repercussions of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are yet to be fully assessed, they are far more serious than those pertaining to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, which resulted in almost one million deaths (New Book Concludes – Chernobyl death toll: 985,000, mostly from cancer Global Research, September 10, 2010, See also Matthew Penney and Mark Selden The Severity of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster: Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima, Global Research, May 25, 2011)
Moreover, while all eyes were riveted on the Fukushima Daiichi plant, news coverage both in Japan and internationally failed to fully acknowledge the impacts of a second catastrophe at TEPCO’s (Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc) Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant.
The shaky political consensus both in Japan, the U.S. and Western Europe is that the crisis at Fukushima has been contained.
The realties, however, are otherwise. Fukushima 3 was leaking unconfirmed amounts of plutonium. According to Dr. Helen Caldicott, “one millionth of a gram of plutonium, if inhaled can cause cancer”.
An opinion poll in May 2011 confirmed that more than 80 per cent of the Japanese population do not believe the government’s information regarding the nuclear crisis. (quoted in Sherwood Ross, Fukushima: Japan’s Second Nuclear Disaster, Global Research, November 10, 2011)
The Impacts in Japan
The Japanese government has been obliged to acknowledge that “the severity rating of its nuclear crisis … matches that of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster”. In a bitter irony, however, this tacit admission by the Japanese authorities has proven to been part of the cover-up of a significantly larger catastrophe, resulting in a process of global nuclear radiation and contamination:
“While Chernobyl was an enormous unprecedented disaster, it only occurred at one reactor and rapidly melted down. Once cooled, it was able to be covered with a concrete sarcophagus that was constructed with 100,000 workers. There are a staggering 4400 tons of nuclear fuel rods at Fukushima, which greatly dwarfs the total size of radiation sources at Chernobyl.” ( Extremely High Radiation Levels in Japan: University Researchers Challenge Official Data, Global Research, April 11, 2011)
Fukushima in the wake of the Tsunami, March 2011
Worldwide Contamination
The dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination. Radioactive elements have not only been detected in the food chain in Japan, radioactive rain water has been recorded in California:
“Hazardous radioactive elements being released in the sea and air around Fukushima accumulate at each step of various food chains (for example, into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow’s meat and milk, then humans). Entering the body, these elements – called internal emitters – migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, continuously irradiating small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years often induce cancer”. (Helen Caldicott, Fukushima: Nuclear Apologists Play Shoot the Messenger on Radiation, The Age, April 26, 2011)
While the spread of radiation to the West Coast of North America was casually acknowledged, the early press reports (AP and Reuters) “quoting diplomatic sources” stated that only “tiny amounts of radioactive particles have arrived in California but do not pose a threat to human health.”
“According to the news agencies, the unnamed sources have access to data from a network of measuring stations run by the United Nations’ Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization. …
… Greg Jaczko, chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told White House reporters on Thursday (March 17) that his experts “don’t see any concern from radiation levels that could be harmful here in the United States or any of the U.S. territories”.
The spread of radiation. March 2011
Public Health Disaster. Economic Impacts
What prevails is a well organized camouflage. The public health disaster in Japan, the contamination of water, agricultural land and the food chain, not to mention the broader economic and social implications, have neither been fully acknowledged nor addressed in a comprehensive and meaningful fashion by the Japanese authorities.
[CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE AND I-BOOK]
Source – http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20120125&articleId=28870
Iranian Ambassador to the IAEA speaks on NPT [video]
Press TV
May 4, 2012
Iranian Ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, delivered a hard hitting statement to the NPT Review Preparatory Committee, saying developments in the area of nuclear disarmament have been grim.
Press TV’s Fabian Pierre reports from Vienna.
